vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
101777-1-month-of-thoughts
Content ---- ---- This experience is happening for a lot of players and is what is causing a loss in subs for Carbine. What I can say is they are working on fixing issues, even if they seem to be causing more with content drop which blows my mind. To add onto this, the game is still fairly new, and should be expected to have bugs, bots and what not that Carbine needs to take care of. The thing though that irks me with this is instead of pulling multiple teams together to fix these faster they are bringing out new content that is buggy as hell and trying to cover things up instead of taking a step back and saying hey, maybe we should hold off on new content until we fix the bugs we have now. How about we pull the team in that is working on new content and reallocate them for a bit to helping us find these bugs and fix them. And to the people that are going to say, they can't do that, they can, they just won't Good flame! that was productive! | |} ---- ---- Adding onto it: PvP: Pretty much what everyone goes through in PvP when starting. Enemy team is over geared and your team can barely communicate. You did also do Rated Battleground, which most people could make that mistake, but at the same time, there's a button to click for options of Group PvE/PvP and Rated most likely means "Hardcore" in this game. PvE: All Madda gets from this was that you did 1 Vet Adventure / Dungeon and wiped and got upset because of one mistake. Veteran anything is not for the faint of heart. Madda suggests using SKype or Mumble or Teamspeak for better communication. That or work on those reflexes. You'll get ninja and trolls in any random pug, really. You just need a group that knows the dungeon fairly well or one where nobody remembered to switch out an ability for an Interrupt Armor breaker because they though they could be carried. Conclusion: For somebody who dislikes most of the game and stays, Madda suggests it would be best if you took a break. Not all of us can be hardcore to play WIldstar. Madda is mediumcore Maddaself. | |} ---- I can think of multiple games that failed because of sticking to a release schedule, and I can think of multiple games that thrived when they pushed back content to make sure bugs were taking care of. People will be happier if fixes happen vs new content with more issues. | |} ---- And I can think of opposites to both of your statements....Some people would be happier with fixes, other will not. | |} ---- So you are saying people will be happy with bugs piling up and never being fixed just for new content to be rolled out? | |} ---- ---- Well yeah, it looks like this MMO is designed for you to be more coordinated which makes pugging difficult. The game has 40 man raids and 40v40 pvp, it looks like the developers want you in a guild. | |} ---- I think it's just the couple of guys here on the forums who prefer quantity over quality. At least it seems it's always the same people coming up with that idea. | |} ---- A MMO where going with PUGs can lead to disaster and disband if the perfect run is failed halfway?! *gasp* That's totally unique to W* and completely unacceptable! Carbine, please fix lame human behavior, it's broken! | |} ---- ---- ---- lol no where near the truth but they are out there. There are posts about what people find wrong with the game about everything from logging in to the hardcore casuals | |} ---- ---- ---- Sounds self inflicted based on these two parts of your feedback. Players who took their time to 50 and experience everything on the way generally had a much more enjoyable experience. | |} ---- Going into rated bg was kinda my fail, but i have done LOST of practice since then an i have had very few games were i felt like my gear was ok for the team on the rest of then i just seated in stealth and supported with shitty skills like phlebo to reduce heal a very short time and theter mines at max to disrupt. Into PvE i have done enought vet adv and tried way to much dungeon pugs to say that they are not viable, have spended huge time trying. How can i use ts and skype with pugs? P.S.: To clarify, I started playing before the end of month 1 sry if i didnt expressed myself well, english is not my native language. @Hardicon Do you think that the blighthaven bug is not important? Of course is not gamebreaking no game OR product have gamebreaking bugs, if the are any gamebreaking bugs the game dont leave the alpha, what i do find annoying is ppl that try so hard to defend that kind of things, when i buy a product i expect it to be fully functional. | |} ---- ---- ---- ^This You can't quest to 50, walk into a veteran adventure, and be fine. There's a reason they tagged these "veteran". You can't blue-blood these and expect an easy clear; you essentially just stepped into a heroic mode. PVP requires extraordinary amounts of coordination to effectively deal with an opposing team. And if you walked into a rated BG, I can see why you were going to be eviscerated. You're running into people who make killing their business; not just casual PVPers getting used to the system. Start small; getting to 50 is the easy part. If you're having trouble, back up and take some time to smell the roses. There's a lot to be had in this game; it's extremely meaty and dense. | |} ---- I'm filthy :D | |} ---- you sure are! :P | |} ---- They won't because it's monumentally inefficient and 9 times out of 10 doesn't get bugs fixed and issues resolved more quickly. Not to mention, the idea that there's some kind of clear line between people fixing bugs and people working on new things is ridiculous. Each department handles specific areas of the game, and are trained and familiar with them. They work on new things at the same time they work on fixing bugs. They do this because it means the people who know the most about something end up being the ones working on it so it gets done better and more quickly, and because after they fix something there needs to be time taken by other people trained to test and clear those fixes for broader testing. Sending someone from zone design over to combat to fix bugs is a waste of time and money, and won't get the result you're hoping for, because instead of fixing bugs, the combat guy has to supervise and train the new helper before they can be useful. My first post wasn't to flame the poster, just to point out the premise is flawed. His argument is the game should be running more smoothly because more than enough time has passed since launch. This is not accurate, and I said so. Sorry the chip on your shoulder about losing our other argument makes it hard to see the point I was making. | |} ---- ---- ---- Unfortunately I have seen the opposite of this, like I stated before, in the company I work for. So I like your opinion but I like mine better :D | |} ---- McDonald's has bug fixes? Come on, you left that post wide open for that :P | |} ---- ---- How come some of the forum threads I've read recently become more about you arguing with someone than about the original OP? Just an observation. | |} ---- ---- Because he takes a stand and defends his views and opinions? | |} ---- ^this | |} ---- Numbers like that are easy to come by. QA Tester salary Game Programmer Salary Game Artist Salary You're saying it's a smart idea to re-task people trained and experienced enough to get those jobs, to do another job that pays about 2/3 as much, instead of doing the bug fixing and content creation they're trained and paid to do. It's a ridiculous proposition, and as I said, still won't get the bugs you want fixed any faster in most cases. | |} ---- I'm not asking for pay rates, those are easy to come by, I was stating numbers based around companies moving people from one area to another for efficiency and time saving... And to assume it is ridiculous is not thinking outside the box. Again until you try it and see the result (because again we do it here with great success) don't think you are holier-than-though | |} ---- Unfortunately, reallocation very rarely makes sense in Carbine's case because game design is such a fragmented field. Unlike your hypothetical example, it isn't like they can just open a ticket, try to duplicate it, and say it's just not an issue if they can't. Most of the time, bug reports aren't detailed enough to give Carbine what they need to even know what happened, but they can't just ignore everything out of hand. They literally have to hand the bug report to whomever knows exactly how that particular boss mechanic or graphical effect or light engine process was made, or they can give it to someone who might know how to program it but knows nothing about it, forcing that person to literally figure out, from scratch, how it was built. That's a very, very long process considering the amount of bug reports they'd get in the best of times. Video games are a lot more complex than most of the things we work on. Handing the guy who handles the lighting engine something having to do with boss mechanics is like handing your HVAC guys a problem you're having with structural beam loads; they don't have the same skill base because they're both technically called "engineers". And, worse, most bugs are an issue between two conflicting areas programmed by different people, so to fix a serious bug, you very often need more people than just one random programmer. And you need to check the fix to make sure you aren't breaking something else anywhere in the game. It's a bit more complex than "peel off some guy from content to sift through bug reports and he should be able to figure out what's wrong." | |} ---- If we as consumers are able to find bugs and let Carbine know about are competent enough to do it then how are the people that already work on the game not as competent? Again, I am not asking them to fix the bugs, I am saying they test the bugs that are known to save time for the team working those bugs. Hell let's make it even easier, how about they hire more people just for bug testing? Does that make more sense? Here's the list of bugs your testing today, follow the steps of where/or what the bug is and let us know the results. There's all the training you need. | |} ---- I don't think I'm holier than thou, I think I'm pragmatic. It's silly to say we should be tasking 50k+ salaried employees with a 37k QA job, and this will somehow get things done faster. | |} ---- I'm not either. Not everyone on the new content team is a 50k+ employee, they more than likely have their own QA people that know what to look for that can easily test bugs in a different departments bug queue and be fine. | |} ---- LOL, what bugs? I'm the first to complain about the issues in WS, but compare it to, oh, every other MMO ever released. There are more bugs in SWTOR today than there are in WS at the moment. Is that an excuse for WS? Nope, but the Dev's have been open about the problems the game does have and they are openly working on solutions. JTal single handedly redeemed the Dev crew IMO when he posted a very honest point by point on itemization and the fixes they are working on. That is something that honestly can't be said about many MMO's out atm, not in magnitude or frequency. Content & bug fixes aren't mutually exclusive, and Carbine is doing both. PvP has it's issues atm; one of which is overgeared groups... However your group can easily be overgeared compared to the other. PvP isn't for everyone, and it seems like you are still not comfortable with stalker mechanics in PvP. You CAN run a utility/assault stalker in PvP with great success if you have your skills and amps optimised; you can also LOL tank walatiki mask runs like a cupcaking god.... You win some and you lose some. Even in my 1500 gear some teams just play better / are better geared; this is always the case in pug PvP. This is the same in SWTOR, and many other MMO's. Why would you expect Vet ANYTHING to be viable in a pug? Wildstar was always marketed as a 'hardcore' PvE experience. It is 'possible' to pug a vet dungeon, but not easy, nor should it be. I don't know why you expect to be able to run veteran end game content without a good group... That is unreasonable even in less 'hardcore' MMO's. You bought a subscription to an evolving interactive virtual world.. The subscription works just fine no? MMO's aren't a pack of batteries, or a flashlight. No one in their right mind expects absolute perfection in an MMO (and no MMO has ever had that); you can't get that even in single player games after years of development, why would it be expected in a massive open game world that is constantly being improved and added to? Bugs suck, and I'm not defending them, but the devs are working to fix them in as efficient a manner as possible, and they actually are fixing them. | |} ---- ---- Jeez, looking at those salaries make me glad I did not go into the game development business. | |} ---- How do you know we're competent at finding bugs? Carbine fixes hundreds of the little bugs, but the people who are working on content right now aren't working on brand new content from scratch; they're just making sure it works in the current drops. Strain, Sabotage, these things were pretty much done before the game even launched and they're just firing them from the clip as they go. If there are any programmers necessary at this point, it's in applying new fixes and patches to the new content. "Hire new people just for bug testing" sounds fine if resources aren't finite. Carbine's a 200-man crew trying to upkeep an MMORPG, not Ubisoft putting out another Assassin's Creed. If they have enough people to hire more programmers, I'm sure that would work just fine. And then they can lay them off if the bugs ever are cleared out. The honest answer is that bugs aren't an issue because of quantity (the easy stuff is easy to fix, and makes up the majority of the bug fixing we see). It's that some of them are very complicated and take a lot of work to iron out from multiple different people, even if they look relatively minor in the game. It's not so easy to see, from the outside, what causes a bug and what the solution is. A game-breaking bug might still only take them a change of a line of code, a small one that annoys you might be a gargantuan conflict between the lighting engine and the hit detection, requiring a massive re-write to both. We simply don't know, especially from the outside looking in. How do we know what we're even looking at? All we know is, "Something doesn't look like it's working right, here," and that's a far cry from "Jeez, anyone should be able to look at this and fix it, or at least be able to sort the bugs." If only sorting bugs was the issue; NCSoft's people are probably already doing that. It's finding out the actual root cause (which entails you actually know how the nuts and bolts of the client work) and sorting it out. That's not something you can hire people for and train them in a few days. Like it or not, they're fixing bugs, at this point, as fast as they possibly can. It's most of what the team is doing right now. That's why they had so much pre-developed content in the hopper; these kinds of teething issues are going to happen in a game this size. | |} ---- ---- Honestly, none of us can really have a good conversation about this once we have no idea what it's like in the Carbine office. We have no idea how the teams are structured, what the code base looks like, how well the test cases are set up, and what they're release planning looks like. We can only guess. | |} ---- I agree. It just makes me laugh when people get so upset with me over my opinion, and I love to start a debate. If people haven't figured that out by now, I'm pretty sure they never will. :D | |} ---- I'll give you a hint. NCSoft runs the authentication server, website, and web account. Those are all secured by IP locking. Carbine runs the game client. They are secured by 2-factor authentication. The roadblock is that Wildstar is just some game for NCSoft, but it's all Carbine does. So NCSoft isn't going to dump money into Carbine to get the bugs fixed; they're just making back their initial investment and they don't care if the game has to go F2P or they have to make it P2W in order to do it. They aren't the same company. So NCSoft's money doesn't belong to Carbine, just the other way around. | |} ---- But therein lies why things can and will continue to go down hill until they can get ahead of the curve, NCSoft can supply Carbine with more money, but they won't. Being that they are the parent company and run the auth server, website and web accounts, as well as the CS, NCSoft can dump as much into the game as they want to make it succeed. It comes down to how much they want to help Carbine with this. Nothing is stopping them from helping | |} ---- Well, nothing besides NCSoft not having any real reason to take us seriously. Why should they? They can send Wildstar into P2W Hell and not care because they'll make their money. Why should they dump money into it because people like you want to maintain the game quality? You've got a major, major misunderstanding about how the NCSoft/everyone else relationship works. They're a publisher, not an artist, why should they dump money from their other games into Wildstar? Carbine does care, which is why they're killing themselves to get bugs fixed and content out. But if you think NCSoft is some kind of glorious angel we can convince to bestow upon Carbine magical money, you've got a very positive image of NCSoft that has no bearing in reality. NCSoft doesn't see themselves as a purveyor of great gameplay. Besides that, Carbine is hiring, it's just that game programmers aren't just expensive, it's that good ones are hard to find. Obviously, none of us do it, so we really don't have much room to stand around asking why Carbine doesn't hire more people to do theoretical things that it's not assured more people will actually help with. | |} ---- ---- You're not Olivar. Just stop it. Seriously sick of the RP Chua fanbois on these forums. One that lives in front of his computer pressing F5 on the forums is bad enough... | |} ---- No, I figured you wanted information, and I've got no problem in continuing to dispense information. I'm simply answering your suppositions about why Carbine doesn't just hire people to handle bug volume, why NCSoft doesn't throw money at the problem, why it's more complicated than you think. If I wanted to talk about your opinion being wrong, I'd just tell you bugs are really not that big of an issue, I've run into two "bugs" so far, if you want to call them that, which in any way adversely affected my gameplay, and compared to my extensive experience in being around for these MMORPG launches, Wildstar's bugs are not the worst of their problems. They probably shouldn't hire anyone or ask NCSoft for anything because I think their response to bugs has been more than adequate. But I try to maintain a bit more of an objective stance and understand that opinions differ, experiences vary, and it may be more of a problem for other people. So I try to stick to just trying to give people better realistic context of the topical situation, since people tend to have irrational responses to their game issues. Most people, with better perspective, aren't trolls, they just have valid issues about the game which are being worked on to the best reasonable ability by those who can do the most to fix them. So I don't assume my pride's on the line with anyone I talk to. I'm just trying to give a more rational view of Wildstar's various hypothetical situations so we can boil out any cogent criticism. | |} ---- Well to assume that the bugs aren't the issue is again your opinion. I can respect it and disagree. If you read the bug forums you can get a good look at why they are a huge issue right now and Carbine has stated it as well. That on top of the horrible RNG that is right now in the game as well as the multiple brick walls that Carbine has created for players is causing, at least in my opinion, their biggest issues. I must say, your vocabulary might be larger than mine, and you can talk as if you are calm cool and collected, but no matter how you slice it, it is still your opinion when it is all boiled down. So, thanks for what you think Carbine/NCSoft are doing and how they want to run things, and I understand that you and I have had a completely different experience in this game. I unfortunately do not have same outlook on the game, the support and the product at hand as you do. So because of this, you defend the game and I try and make it evident what issues need to be fixed. All in all, we are both helping Carbine. | |} ---- Oh, I'm not defending the game by any stretch of the imagination. I presented one of the more in-depth criticisms of the game a while back, and my dislike of NCSoft knows no bounds. The whole point of bringing up my better experience with bugs is that it doesn't necessarily help the conversation, obviously. I'm here to try to be realistic about where the game is and where it's going. I'm optimistic because of the very good things I've seen in it, and they more than outweigh what I see as issues that need addressing. In fact, I do by a considerable margin. So I try not to bring my good game experience into play too often. What I do is try to understand where the poster is coming from, and I think your position is related to your game experience paired with a somewhat skewed idea of Carbine's capacity to fix the issues any faster than they're being fixed. I consider their response adequate, but that's a matter of opinion. I try to stick to the reality of, for example, NCSoft not being probably a good entity to look towards to make the bug issue disappear any faster, or that Carbine can somehow realign their staff to nip all the bugs in the bud somehow faster than they are. It's just not practical; it's going as fast as it reasonably can be expected to. There are criticisms of the game I've agreed with and suggested solutions for, and there are criticisms of the game I've disagreed with and explained my reasons why. Just because we might not agree on Carbine's handling of their debugging doesn't mean we're somehow diametric opposites; I have a tendency to tell Carbine what I like about the game as I tell them what I want to change because, if you only give negative feedback, you have no place to complain if the cure is worse than the disease. People have a tendency to only cry out dire warnings about how their particular experience will bring about a doomsday scenario for Wildstar, they don't tend to make posts about how everything's going fine. Unfortunately, the latter is more important. As the WoW experience proves, if you only complain about the issues and never say what you enjoy, you can't complain when they sacrifice what you enjoy to fix your issues. So I always think it's important to delineate what needs fixed from what should not be touched. My effusions of praise, especially in critical threads, is intended mostly to make sure that, even if I agree with some of the criticism, Carbine doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water. In the context of the original OP, though, I think my original point was that his approach to both PVP and PVE were flawed. Simply put, he jumped into the deep end before he learned to swim, and Wildstar is known for boasting unforgiving waters. It's not to completely defraud his post; I don't disagree with the entirety of it. However, his main points seem to be mired in the fact that he went into an endgame that prided itself publicly for being difficult without adequately preparing for it. In this game, doing that generally means you drown and drag everyone around you down with you. | |} ---- ---- I guess what some players see is, everytime new content hits, it comes with its own set of bugs that needs fixing. Which means those guys who were in the process of fixing old stuff, have more on their plate to fix with the new content bugs to fix on top. Adding to their load. So they see if the new content was to stop for a while, the bug fixes could only be for the old stuff. (as there would be nothing new to add to the list) | |} ---- ---- Welcome to modern online gaming where everything ends in disappointment and dreams are shattered monthly! | |} ---- I don't think it is I that has to catch up. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=538004 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1012660/ http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/631-Bug-Reports Now show me honest and consistent communication between the devs of those games and their community.... Don't worry, I'll wait :3 People QQing about bugs have a skewed or non-existant conception of the relationship between bugs and MMO's, and the time it takes to completely ameliorate them. They would rather QQ, unsub, and grief the community / devs because they weren't served king crab on a silver platter. No game is perfect, W* least of all. But it's a fun experience for what it is, and the devs make much more of an effort to work with and respond to the community than those of any MMO I've ever played, which is a blessing and a curse. Because some individuals will never be happy regardless. To them I say good riddance; W* is estimated to make as much / more than Lineage 2 this year, if you don't have fun playing W* that's cool, it might not be the game for you. Go do something else. -Naz | |} ---- Other thing the "quantity" screamers don't realize, is by piling more on top, it's just yet more code/structure/bits for bugs to carry on throughout. It'd be like piling more floors onto a house with a foundation cracked, chipping, and breaking apart in several places. Any data/variables carried over into expanded locations and/or content, that have bugs/glitches/issues, will just bug/glitch the extra data. It's kind of like many moons ago in school in math class... once you make an error in a complex equation, the error continues to carry through the ENTIRE equation throwing off every additional computation/solution all the way to the end... with an even bigger headache and cluster-cupcake just to trace back and find where the error occurred. Back when learning/studying programming and/or college-level computer-science, again many moons ago (majored in computer-science, minored in psychology -- if your computer has a breakdown... I can give it therapy! I love tossing out that line, LOL!), one of the first rules was to always fix all errors before adding ANY additional code, as the more added can make it more unstable (there've been plenty that have reported that as the game gets chuggy/memory-leaking-ish it can hold the entire system hostage and be quite difficult just to get the game closed via task-manager to this very day), more volatile, less secure, and more prone to crashing/error-ing/botching (feel free to peruse any dated windows versions for perfect examples) -- not to mention harder to trace... much like throwing even more hay on a haystack you're attempting to find the proverbial needle in. :ph34r: Biggest drawback to NCSoft's business practices is they see games more as cash-cows/money-printers than actual games (perhaps they should look into making Facebook games!?) -- of course and obviously it's about the profit and the gains, we'd be kidding ourselves to say it wasn't, without profit there's no point in operating a business... but many devs/publishers do a much better job of hiding it and/or keeping it "behind the scenes", or even at the very least, attempting to. NCSoft are all about the final paycheck and bottom-line... once a game isn't doing well, they drop it to f2p to try and milk the cash-cow even more to the very last potential drop -- not always really having much concern for the players'/customers'/clients' experience be it p2p, b2p, f2p, p2w, etc. Once the game stops pulling its weight, they're notorious for not just destroying it, but taking it out of the world completely to never have a chance at success, redemption, rebooting/relaunching, again -- (City of Heroes anyone?). This isn't to shield Carbine by any means, they've had their own bucket-fulls of botch-ups and missteps... but being in bed with a partner like NCSoft just complications their issues... talk about rock and a hard place. :huh: | |} ---- | |} ----